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How to use CCR, DSS, VPL (aka Microsoft Robotics Development Studio) outside robotics?

I am looking for guidance in this field. I have tried all the examples and find the framework intriguing.

Can anyone post other uses and examples, outside robotics?

PS. I am looking for someone to explain some of the more complex stuff to me. I have questions regarding different implementations. If anyone is interested, i am willing to pay for a one to one talk (consulting) on the advanced topics. You can reach me via email, same name as here.

Kara
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unom
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4 Answers4

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The best resource i could find was this:

Professional Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio Kyle Johns, Trevor Taylor ISBN: 978-0-470-14107-6 Paperback 826 pages

A very good read indeed.

unom
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I hope this isn't too late to help. I've been struggling with some of this too, and I think I have the key points wrestled to the ground.

The simple answer is that you can use DSS and/or CCR in any sort of application, not just robotics.

DSS is a library and framework for light-weight distributed applications. DSS is organized around "services" that can communicate with each other and can run on different hosts. MRDS includes services wrapped around a variety of robot hardware, including generic services you can use to manage or simulate many different robots. However, these are just services as far as DSS is concerned. You can create any kind of service, distribute your services across different hosts,and have really "sexy" server/service based applications.

CCR provides a mechanism for doing multi-threaded applications very easily. Objects are posted to special queues called Ports. Threads are/can be dispatched to run handlers that deal with the Ports. (I know; I'm way over-simplifying). The point here is that you can use CCR in any application where you need a lot of carefully managed multi-threading. You do have to use CCR in creating DSS Services, but you do not have to use DSS in order to use CCR.

As for the Visual Programming Language, I'm still working on that. However, you'll find two kinds of things you can wire together: programming primitives and Services. To extend VPL to do things outside of robots, make DSS Services you can wire together.

Hope this helps Basil B.

Basil B.
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I've seen couple of channel9 videos where they demo using CCR outside robotics. I do not know the roots of CCR, but since the core product developers- George and Satnam Singh have backgrounds in XNA and related technologies, they understand the problem which CCR addresses very well. Besides there are lots of research papers which I've seen outside the robotics world which people have used CCR for. I'm implementing some web services outside the robotics domain in MRDS's dsshost and CCR and will upload them shortly

iceman
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Yeah, definitely get the the RDS book by K. Johns and T. Taylor for more help repurposing the DSS/CCR.

By the way, your question is an excellent example of lateral thinking, which evidently some people at MySpace asked themselves back in 2007.

Also, for more details, check the Microsoft forums, in particular, this CCR thread.

Gustavo Mori
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